India: shariat courts to also act as counsellors to save marriages

By Indo-Asian News Service, 30 August 2009

With a view to curbing the rising incidence of talaq (divorce), shariat (Islamic law) courts have been asked to act as marriage counsellors with a clear cut brief to prevent divorces as much as possible.

“The whole idea behind the move is to prevent disruption and division of families,” said AIMPLB leader Maulana Khalid Rasheed, expressing concern over the growing tendency among couples to split over petty differences.

While a shariat court was always seen only as a forum for formalising a split between a husband and wife, it would now also play the role of a facilitator to keep a couple united.

Maulana Khalid Rasheed told IANS that the board has resolved to urge all shariat courts to see that talaq is accomplished only when separation is inevitable and there is no scope for a patch-up between an estranged couple.

“Divorce is neither encouraged by religion nor by society; therefore it should be the prime duty of a qazi (shariat court judge) to prevent a family from getting separated,” he said.

“As such, anyone approaching a darul qaza (shariat court) for talaq would first be subjected to several rounds of good counselling and discouraged from going in for divorce, which should be allowed only after it was established that re-uniting was impossible,” he added.